Sense is correct. We should spend time submitting patches to make things "look better", and not impose guidelines that developers will just ignore anyway.
On 09/18/2011 03:43 PM, Sense Egbert Hofstede wrote: > On 18 September 2011 20:11, Matthew Paul Thomas <m...@canonical.com> wrote: > Jonathan Meek wrote on 07/09/11 19:33: > >>> > >>> Actually, I intended something more in depth than that. I asked one of > >>> the designers and am going to attempt to begin work on a comprehensive > >>> HIG. Everything about the design needs to be thought out, not just > >>> 'integrate with this.' The problem with this undertaking is that there > >>> are so few applications that can be considered "Ubuntu" applications. > >>> Less and more than you would think. (Though, I've only heard from one > >>> person, and his design choices may not be the consensus of the entire > >>> design team) > >>> ... > > I'd hope it isn't. ;-) But Thorsten Wilms was right: what will > developers make out of it? Interface guidelines are useless unless they > actually change developers' behavior. For example, Microsoft has > extensive Windows UX guidelines on MSDN, but given all the "copying > Apple" worry in this thread, it seems nobody here has even heard of them. > > Now, imagine these responses from application developers if you wrote > some interface guidelines for Ubuntu: > > * "Ubuntu design guidelines? I've never heard of them." > > * "Jonathan Meek? I've never heard of him. Why should I do what he > says?" > > * "Ubuntu? Ubuntu's just a distro, what business do they have setting > 'guidelines' for applications?" > > * "I use Fedora for development, why should I care what Ubuntu wants?" > > * "Ubuntu? You want me to take advice from the people who designed > Unity? Hah!" > > * "I read a couple of pages but it was really boring." > > * "Gnome already has guidelines, this is just another example of > Ubuntu trying to go their own way. Shame on them." > > Improving the design of Ubuntu applications is a design problem in > itself. And even if those criticisms are unfair, they're going to come > up. So if you want to make a difference, you need to have a way to > minimize, or be able to address, each of those criticisms. > > >>> Provisionally, Mr. Gifford is correct. The are going to be started on, > >>> and presented for peer review. I'm debating how to go about this now > >>> less than I am whether to go about it at all. > >>> > >>> I would like some opinions to feedback into this. I know what the > >>> designer said were good designed Ubuntu applications, but what do > >>> people here think are some? And why do you think that? (This includes, > >>> looks, structure, and behavior as well as integration.) > >>> ... > > This is the biggie. If guidelines are to be credible, they need to be > either self-evidently logical, demonstrated to succeed in real Ubuntu > applications, and/or written by people who designed successful Ubuntu > applications. The Windows, Mac, and iOS guidelines can all use > applications designed by the OS vendor as examples of what to do. But > there are very few applications targeted for Ubuntu first, let alone > Ubuntu exclusively. I think guidelines will be premature until that > changes. > >> >> _______________________________________________ >> Mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~ayatana >> Post to : ayatana@lists.launchpad.net >> Unsubscribe : https://launchpad.net/~ayatana >> More help : https://help.launchpad.net/ListHelp >> > > Guidelines are very great and such, but like you already said, many > people will not even bother to read them. Even if we manage to get > everyone to read the guidelines, then there is the issue of > interpretation. You cannot have complete and perfect consistency if > you don't want the guidelines to spell out the code that the > developers have to use. > > We always say that we should take away the difficulty of choosing from > users when they do not have the tools or knowledge available to make > the right decision. The same logic applies here to developers. Most > developers are not in the right position to make good decisions about > interface design or about the correct implementation of a guideline. > To do it right, we should take away their choice. > > That means: do not spend time implementing what we know about design > in the text of guidelines, but spend our time implementing it in code. > We should make GTK+ (and maybe Qt too) look better. Locate areas where > things don't look so great and submit patches for them. Propose better > default values for the properties, submit code that generates pretty > menu bars, etc. We should take away choice by making the easiest > solution available to developers the solution we want, e.g. writing > beautiful and good implementations of standard behaviour (tabs, Ubuntu > One, media playing, things like that) that developers can just plug > into their applications. Because those methods will be the standard > way of doing things, the easiest way of doing things, they will use > them and with that they will automatically be consistent with the rest > of the desktop. > > If the current solution for this problem is too hard, we should try to > find a solution that we can handle, a solution that involves coding > and designing under control of the right designers. > > Regards, -- Cheers, James Gifford http://jamesrgifford.com
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